UPDATE
Don, at Skyguard, has been working diligently to see that Skyguard ADS-B transceiver unit customers are supported. Here is the latest FAA information:
Don posted this on his SkyGuard forum 2 days ago. I knew he would come through with a solution.
"All:
As some of you may recently have learned, the FAA has decided to throw a ?curve ball? to all the ADS-B Transceiver manufactures and their customers. There was a recent notification on the FAA WEB site that states the ADS-B TIS-B Traffic Client policy and methodology will be changed sometime in early 2016. We first learned of this about 3 weeks ago when one of our customers sent me the document. Without getting too technical, what the policy change defines is that any ADS-B transmitter that is currently transmitting with SDA and SIL parameters set to zero will no longer be identified as a TIS-B Traffic Client and the ADS-B ground station towers will no longer transmit that aircrafts surrounding traffic targets back up to that aircrafts ADS-B IN receivers. Of course this was a big shock to us as most all of our Transceivers and Transmitters have SDA and SIL parameters set to zero. This is what the FAA directed us to do over 2 years ago when we first started shipping our products. The intent then was for ATC to see these 2 parameters and knowing they were zero, would not use the ADS-B transmissions for aircraft separation in controlled airspace until we could achieve TSO-C154c certification. Upon TSO certification, we would update these parameters to values indicating a TSO certified unit. Now, according to the FAA, they have done a recent analysis and found that approx. 40% of the aircraft containing ADS-B Transmitters are flying with incorrectly installed or incorrectly configured ADS-B units. We believe the FAA enacted this policy change to force pilots to correct their installation/configuration. Unfortunately, SkyGuardTWX has gotten caught up in this new policy. Upon learning of this information, I immediately called my contacts within the FAA Washington office to understand why this was being done. As I suspected, the FAA is cracking down on aircraft with improperly installed/configured ADS-B Transmitters. And they are using the TIS-B traffic service as leverage to force corrections. Of course I had further conversations with the FAA to help develop a plan for our existing customers to continue to receive TIS-B client services while we continue to work on our TSO certification. After much discussion, the FAA is going to allow us to use an ?alternate? GPS position source where we can set the SDA and SIL parameters to numbers greater than zero but NOT as a fully TSO?d position source. This GPS is ?rule compliant? with 5hz position updates and will support both an internal active antenna as well as an externally mounted active antenna. This will allow our units to continue to receive TIS-B traffic client services after the enacted policy change. Unfortunately, this will require most of our customers to send back their units for a GPS swap and firmware update. Even though, we consider this issue as caused by the FAA reneging on their original directions to us, we want to support our customers as much as possible, so we have decided to split the cost of the GPS hardware with our customers. The customer pays half and we pay half of the GPS and associated parts cost, and we perform the upgrade for no labor costs. The cost of the GPS and parts is approx. $100, so our customers would pay $50 plus their return shipping costs. We will pay for the remaining $50 in parts, perform the labor to install it, and the shipping cost to get the updated units back to our customers. We fully intend to pursue the TSO-C154c certification using this ?alternate GPS?. One thing I want to be perfectly clear on is this ?alternate GPS? has not been TSO certified by the FAA and therefore there is some possibility that another GPS swap might be required to meet the overall TSO-C154c certification requirement at a later date. When it comes to the FAA, one can never be sure what will change!
We will soon be contacting our customers in groups and notifying them of this GPS update so they can send in their units. The FAA has ?assured me? this TIS-B policy change will happen no sooner than Jan 1, 2016 and could be later until it is actually implemented. Please remember that we have approx. 300 affected units in the field that could be updated so it will take all our resources to get this done prior to Jan 1, 2016. If any customers do not want to take advantage of this update, then their Transceivers will still operate as ADS-B IN receivers. Thank you for your patience with us and your support of SkyGuardTWX products.
Sincerely,
Don Houtz
SkyGuardTWX"
